


The Part of Me That's You Will Never Die

by delgaserasca



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, F/M, Kinda, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: The house is Jack’s house and without him there to claim it, every room echoes with his going.Ally takes a vacation.





	The Part of Me That's You Will Never Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chase_acow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chase_acow/gifts).



a return   
to the strange idea of continuous living despite   
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty.

**\-- Ada Limon,** **_Instructions on Not Giving Up_ **

  
  
  


Later - afterwards, when a few months have passed and people stop coming by so much - later Ally finds herself sobbing on the floor of the den, whisky soaked into the carpet from an overturned bottle on the side cabinet. Rez says she can take time, but she knows he’s waiting to bring up the European tour again, maybe spin it as a comeback, fallen girl rises again, some shit like that, and Bobby - Bobby and Dad and Ramon - won’t a one of them quit calling her. If Ally’s got to hear that phone ring one more time, she’s going to hurl it from the window, so help her. She catches sight of herself in the cabinet glass: her roots need touching up, and her lips are chapped; somewhere in the house a tap is running and windows are letting in the rain. She can’t be here anymore. The house is Jack’s house and without him there to claim it, every room echoes with his going.

It’s an easy choice to make. She packs a bag, calls her dad first, and then Phil - sweeps her notebook in with her passport and clothes - and heads out. 

  
  
  


_ Maybe we go some place, _ Jack had said, testing out notes on the piano in slow dolorous tones,  _ when I’m feeling up to it. Take a couple of days between your shows, somewhere the water’s as blue as your eyes. _

_ My eyes are brown, _ she’d laughed, but it had been a nice idea.  _ Maybe we should. During the tour maybe. _

It had been the wrong thing to say; she knows that now. Jackson hadn’t looked up from his hands, didn’t move at all for a beat, then carried on climbing the scale one heavy note at a time.  _ Yeah. Maybe. _

  
  
  


She calls Phil because Phil had helped her with a few things. He’d been around to take her places after the funeral, making sure no-one got a look at her without her wanting it, and sitting outside the house at all hours until she stomped out and made him follow her back in. She’d set him up in a guest room for about a week until one morning she’d come out to see him making breakfast and remembered he had a home and a family of his own and she shouldn’t lean on him even if he was happy for her to.

“I know Jack asked everything of you,” she’d said, “but I won’t do it. Go home, Phil. Your boys will be waiting.”

He’d been the one to book the flight for her, and the hotel, and he’d driven up to take her to the airport, car ready and idling in the drive by the time she was ready to leave.

“Don’t tell Bobby,” she says, grabbing her bag.

“He’s going to ask--”

“--you don’t have to answer--”

“--and when he asks he’s going to make me look him in the eye--”

“Phil.”

He sighs. “Sure, okay. I won’t tell.” He watches her exit the car. “Take it easy.”

Four hours and change later, when she steps off the plane and into the Dominican sun, she takes a deep breath in the humid air and nods. Yeah, okay. It was a good call. She needs a break. They say a change is as good as rest. Maybe this place can be both.

  
  
  


The first couple of days, she doesn’t leave the hotel. She wakes up close to midday, texts her dad, orders food up to the room and eats it on the bed. On day three she sits by the window whilst the maids go about changing the towels and making the bed, and she hopes none of them recognise her, though one of the younger ones seems to know something’s up, squinting up at Ally from through the crack in the bathroom door. 

Ally turns her back on her, shutting down any chance of conversation. She’s got an ocean view, the best money can buy, but it’s still a dream to her. Any second now she’ll wake up, Jack breathing warm against her neck, rolling along in that old tour bus one more time.

Get it together, she thinks, wiping angrily at her tears, who comes all the way to Dominican just to cry some more? She forces herself to get dressed and head out. There’s got to be something to do around here.

  
  
  


Bearing in mind Ally’d never travelled - not really, and never by air - she’d taken to it with ease. All those miles on the road with Jack; she hadn’t hated it. Hadn’t seen much of anything either, every day a round of diners and gas stations, dive bars and honky tonks stacked up between concert hall after concert hall, and finding she didn’t mind, kind of liked it anyway, tucking in with Jack on that old tour bus, scrawling her heart out as the miles ticked by. At a late-night stop in Wichita the diner was playing 90s country, and Jack made the waitress turn it up, asked her real sweet in that way he had, looked Ally in the eye whilst she ate her eggs and sang along, soft and low --  _ I’m the last gas for an hour if you’re going twenty-five; I am Texaco and tobacco; I am dust you leave behind _ \-- smile playing his lips the whole damn time. 

The Caribbean isn’t that, though. She’s seen the ocean before, but the Atlantic out from Brighton beach isn’t the same as from where she is right now. The sand is white and hot beneath her feet, and the sea-- the sea is so blue here. She can’t picture Jack at the beach, but she can see him in the water, doing laps along the shore, maybe taking a boat out to ride one of those jet skis. He’d have loved the food, she thinks, loved the salt heavy seafood, eaten too much lobster and drunk too many cheap beers. 

She stays in front of the receding shoreline for an hour or two, watching people come and go, couples lounging in swimwear under the shade of large off-white umbrellas, a group playing volleyball, and kids making sandcastles, before making her way back up to town, passing through fish vendors and fruit markets, feeling the sun heavy on her back. She doesn’t pause; heads straight back to the hotel, thinks about going for a swim in the pool. Goes back to her room. Orders in. 

Baby steps.

  
  
  


Rez has called every single day since Ally left Jack’s house, and sent increasingly unintelligible texts. She deletes every single one without reading them, texts her dad and then Ramon -  _ I’m ok. Went to the beach today _ \- then reads her messages from Bobby. 

The first couple are more of what he’d been sending her for weeks, hoping she’s alright, and suggestions to meet up for lunch one day; a casual note saying he’d passed by the house and missed her - was everything okay? 

They start to get a little frantic after that - for Bobby’s value of frantic. Wanting to know where she is, saying he’d called round and the house had been closed for days. Asking her to call him back, let him know she’s in one piece. 

That’s the last of the texts, but she’s got a heap of missed calls from him, too, and not any she’s inclined to reply to. She plays his voice message; deflates a little at hearing his guttural baritone, so close to Jack’s, but lacking the melody.

_ Hey little bird. I spoke to your father. Says you’re on vacation,  _ he stresses the word, leaning on the second syllable and his mild incredulity.  _ Call me when you’re ready - the studio’s been in touch. I can tell them back off but you got to let me know what you want. _ His voice pauses, then he sighs.  _ I miss him too, kid. You take care now. Let me know _ .

She throws her phone back towards her bag, watches as it misses, knocking the whole thing to the floor. When she goes to pick it up, her notepad falls out again, loose sheets flying out. One of them catches her eye. She crouches to separate the sheets, takes a moment to go over them; remembers. 

She drops the bag back on the floor, and crawls into bed. It can wait til morning.

  
  
  


The days take on a routine. Ally finds herself oversleeping, too tired when she finally gets up to do more than walk back to the beach. The hotel staff know her now, as the recluse in the premium room if not as  _ the  _ Ally Maine. No one gives her any bother as she comes and goes, wide-brimmed hat pulled down a little to cover her face. She ventures to the dining room for lunch, spots a flyer promoting boat rides or luaus or some other entertainment. Considers each one quietly before sitting down to eat or heading out to the beach again. After a couple of days heading straight for the shore, Ally had walked further along to a quieter stretch and made that her port of call. After that first day she’d taken to carrying sun lotion and a bottle of water, careful to ward against sun stroke. The last thing she needs is to cut her trip short.

She hasn’t decided yet what she’s going to do or when, and Bobby’s still calling to ask her to get in touch. That morning she’d woken up to see her phone flashing on the floor where she’d left it, watching Bobby’s call come in then end. She’d put her phone on to charge but left everything else on the floor. By the time she’d got back from the beach that day, housekeeping had arranged everything neatly on the side table: clothes, toiletries, the notebook. She hasn’t moved them since, except to change her clothes. 

It’s not that she doesn’t have anything to say; there’s so much in her head right now, she can’t separate one good thought from the next. There’s no melody, so there’s no ease. It’s not like when she sat on the kerb outside the Seven-Eleven with Jack: all her heart is right in her mouth, and it’s stopping her from reaching the song. There’s one there, she knows it. She just can’t get to it yet. 

She takes the book with her anyway; puts the loose sheets back in her bag, not willing or not able to look at them yet. It’s too soon. She hasn’t sung in weeks. There’s no music in Ally’s world, not without Jack. 

  
  
  


She dreams about it sometimes: the flood lights, the crowds screaming; Billy on the drums and Pablo and Michael on guitar, one or other of them leading the bass in, waiting on Jack, waiting on his magic, every heartbeat in the arena marching loudly in time, feet stomping, hands clapping-- the way Jack would play those opening chords, loud and unafraid and looking straight at her, grinning wild and wide and open, stringing everyone along, hitting those same notes again,  _ looking  _ at her, watching and waiting, whilst she couldn’t take her eyes off him, the way his hands moved, the sweat at the hollow of his throat that she’d kissed out a thousand times or more, stretching that note out the way he stretched himself over her body after the show, waiting, waiting, waiting--

That’s when Ally had loved him most: that beat before he went to work, when he sought her out to take her with him, holding her gaze a second too long before he jumped off the edge, the whole world falling gladly down after him.

  
  
  


Rez’s texts have become snide. Ally messages Phil, asks him to get Bobby to pull Rez back, playing Chinese whispers to avoid talking to anyone before she’s absolutely ready. 

_ Tell me you’ve at least been writing whilst you’ve been off in this snit, _ says Rez’s last message, and it makes her so mad she throws her phone at the wall. That asshole. That fucking  _ asshole. _ The fuck does he know?

There had never been anything in Ally’s life that could match up to how it felt to tour with Jack. He’d given her so much, but she’d put so much of herself behind the work, too. Writing with Jack - riding with him, laughing and performing, and singing her heart out with him - nothing could best that. 

_ People want to hear what you have to say, _ he’d tell her;  _ that’s the stuff right there. _

Thing is, Ally’s not sure whether she’s got shit to say any more.

  
  
  


It’s Ramon in the end who convinces her she should go somewhere other than the beach.  _ You’re on an island in the Caribbean. Ally, you can see a beach any place. The Dominican has mountains and sights and shit.  _ She’d called him after trading texts with him for a few days, missing his company and needing a friend. He didn’t press too much about Jack, just launched into a tirade about the shift manager like they were both still on staff, getting ready to run out to Ally’s show as soon as they clocked out. 

So anyway, she’s going up a mountain. It’s unbelievably beautiful up there; she’s never seen a sky like it, and from the van that takes the tour up, she can see the sea for miles, and green - god, so much green, like nothing you’d ever see back home. 

They stop a ways up and have to continue on foot. There’s a couple of girls in the group, friends by the look of it rather than sisters, and if they recognise her they don’t bring it up, but they share their food with Ally and she shares hers back, listening to the two of them banter back and forth. She’s glad she listened to Ramon; hearing the kids joke with each other, she misses him all the more. One of the girls is talking about their trip so far and where they plan to go next. They’re on a break before they head to college in different towns. The other can’t take her eyes off her. She might be in love with her friend; Ally isn’t sure. It’s real easy to get caught up in each other. She wants to take both girls in her arms and tell them to hold tight.  _ Take everything you can put your hands on, _ she wants to say, but instead she listens to them laughing and joking all the way to the lookout.

It’s cooler at the vantage point, the wind pushing around aggressively, the sea chopping up in the distance. Ally takes a deep breath - she’s been doing that a lot recently, trying to pull the distant parts of her together and back into her body. Something in her chest wobbles precariously; for the first time in days her eyes sting again.  _ I love you, _ she thinks;  _ I wish you were here. _ She breathes carefully, not wanting to draw attention to herself, and sits on the bluff overlooking the region. She feels Jack’s absence like a knife in her ribs; it hurts every time she inhales, but she can’t stop, and he won’t come back. 

She’s startled by one of the girls - Maria, the lovelorn one - sitting down next to her. She passes Ally a handkerchief with a sad smile before turning to look out over the island, giving Ally some privacy with her grief.

“Lisa has a boyfriend waiting for her back home,” she offers up in a low tone. “When we get home, she’s going to leave for her fancy college and that’ll be it for us.” 

Ally wipes her face. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” she says.

“Doesn’t it?”

Thinking about it, Ally sniffs, wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. “It’ll be what you make it.”

Maria looks at her a little while. “I guess that’s true of anything.”

Ally thinks about Jack - she always thinks about Jack - and how he’d slowly fallen apart under her hands even when Ally was trying her hardest. She looks back at Maria and shrugs. She might be right.

  
  
  


Taking a glass of wine with her, Ally goes to sit on the balcony of her room, looking out at the sea in the distance. She takes the loose sheets of paper from her notepad, takes them with her. Looks over what she has in her hands.

Bobby had called again a day ago; he was waiting to hear from her, wanting to know what she was going to do next and warning that Rez was close to imploding, like she gave a shit what Rez had to say about anything. It had taken her a while to get over her anger - how dare anyone try to make money off her heart right now?  _ The studio, _ Bobby had explained,  _ they want to offer you a show, kind of a memorial. I told them I’d run it past you, but they’ve been waiting. They’ll wait some more, but I don’t know how much. _

She looks over the music in her hands; passes her fingers over the pages, remembering the way Jack looked sitting at the piano, the careful way he’d pressed out the chords. Remembering how every note sounded like  _ I love you _ and  _ I’m sorry _ and  _ I need you _ all in one. Thought about what she’d seen in him even at the start; what it had meant when she’d asked him,  _ aren’t you tired trying to fill that void?  _ How he’d answered her in his own way in the song, in her song that he’d taken the bones of and given life to. 

She’d been singing to herself her whole life, but nothing Ally had ever written-- it had never sounded like that, never felt the way it did when Jack sang it, put together in his hands for her in front of this crowd. Nothing he’d wanted more than to share what he had with her. She’d know all along, somehow. He’d told her from the start.

_ I’m falling; in all the good times I find myself longing for change. _

_ And in the bad times I fear myself. _

All that, and it hadn’t stopped him from walking into that garage whilst she’d been waiting for him on stage. All that, and it hadn’t changed his course. One way or another, Ally will always be waiting for Jack to sing with her again. 

  
  
  


She can hear it, clear as a bell in her mind.

She picks up her pen, and starts writing. 

  
  
  


She calls Bobby, thinking about the song Jack wrote, the way he’d looked when he’d played it to her, his voice working hard but clear; the way he hadn’t wanted to look her in the eye until he’d finished; the way his hands felt around her waist, his mouth on her hair, her cheek. Thinks about how he’d ask her and she’d ask him back -  _ how’d you hear this? _ \- how it would be in front of an audience, and how it would feel to say out loud what Jack had wanted to say to her with love. It could be a tribute, she thinks, waiting for the call to connect. Something to hold up against the memory of the man she remembered, the one she loved even when he made her scream; the one she loved even when he’d gone.

“Bobby,” she says, when he picks up, maybe just up for the day, or maybe just gone down after another show. “Bobby, you got to call who you know. Someone. Anyone. No, Bobby--  _ Bobby. _ I’ve got something to say.” She plays the song in her head; thinks how true it is and whether Jack had known she would need it. “Jack still had something to say.”

“Bobby,” she says, looking out at the sea. “Tell them I’ll do it.”

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Always Remember Us This Way from the film soundtrack; lyrics in the fic from Mary Chapin Carpenter's I Am A Town and also Shallow. Epigraph from Ada Limon's Instructions on Not Giving Up. Happy Yuletide chase_acow! This isn't a funky (or even fun?) AU, but I hope it hits your post-film needs all the same.


End file.
